JOB AND WORK DESIGN – SOLANGE DE SANTIS
...tation helps to reduce the monotonous aspect of her work. By decreasing boredom and daydreaming it is possible to observe an increase in motivation and job satisfactory. De Santis’s improved satisfaction will have a positive affect on her health and productivity. It will take two months to implement Job rotation to achieve the desired outcomes. Job Enrichment: When De Santis works at GM van assembly plant, she is so surprised at the lack of trust, respect and dignity with GM management; management did not give positive feedback or recognition on their performance; there seems to be no transparency and no communication between management and shop floor workers. Employees have no responsibility for quality. Hence, employees are not satisfied with their job, and have no motivation to improve quality; of course, this has a negative impact on job productivity and job safety. The job enrichment model is a way to solve some of the problems outlined above. Job enrichment refers to the vertical expansion of jobs and increasing the degree to which employees control the planning, execution and evolution of their work. The benefits of job enrichment are numerous. To begin with, job enrichment aims to maximize the interest and challenge of the work because employees see as much of the product cycle as possible, employees have a high degree of autonomy in decision making and pace of the work to be carried out. The result of this is that the employees can know how well they are performing by the results of their work. It increases employees’ job satisfaction and motivation, which we know has a significant association with job productivity and job safety. Secondly, job enrichment increases employees’ job responsibilities and improves feedback from management so that employees can improve their performance to make work much more efficient and productive. In addition, job enrichment encourages employees to participant in decision-making, employees psychologically assume ownership of the decision and are more apt to their implementation. Finally, job enrichment gives employees much more control of their tasks and decision making authority, increasing their feeling of self-efficacy and promoting better mental health. Since job enrichment is good solution to help De Santis to improve her job and give her a better healthier workplace. What should change to make job enrichment be implemented successfully? There are many ways to implement job enrichment; however, the most important change is to establish the employees own workstation. First of all, management of GM agree to give De Santis authority to establish her own workstation, she can control her work schedule, and have the flexibility to respond to uncertainties. This redesigned workspace can make her work much more efficient and productive. De Santis will have a range of responsibilities and tasks that make up her work activities. To show her ownership she is responsible for quality and has to check her own work. It helps her to leverage her experience and skills; she has a chance to grow up. She becomes more satisfied with her job. Since she is satisfied with her job, she will have great motivation to do it safer and more productively. Second, management should invite her to participant in meetings that relate to working procedure this will allow her to pass on her feedback and ideas to the management team. Management should, as soon as possible, give her feedback regarding her performance. Feedback will help her to evaluate her performance and lead to increased productivity. Specially, the positive feedback increases her job satisfaction and motivation. Finally, management should give her reasonable training such as safety, technical and communication skills training. This knowledge will help to provide her with the necessary knowledge, skills and information to optimize her work procedure and schedule. By managing her own workstation effectively it can give her more control and improve the quality of her work, increase her job safety and productivity. Implementation of Job enrichment needs half a year to achieve the desired outcomes. Teamworking: Effective teamworking positively affects an organization’s productivity and the quality of their products. However, according to De Santis’s experience, GM does not design good teamworking groups that enable members to collaborate with each other and improve work efficiency and quality. As a result there is poor and underdeveloped communication channels among shop floor employees. This leads to a decrease in employees’ motivation and productivity. What kind of job design change can we recommend to De Santis that will provide for a better and more productive workplace? The answer is teamworking. Teamworking has the advantage of making the group responsible for production decisions. This can generate peer pressure that helps to enforce high levels of performance; Teamworking encourages employees to share power with management. This reduces the overall need for management and enhances employees’ confidence in their ability to perform their job. The employees’ shared influence in their own team contributes to the organization and increases productivity. Teamworking provides for the job satisfaction and loyalty that comes from creatively achieving challenging goals. Secondly, teamworking can increase employees’ ownership and commitment that will foster an environment in which people choose to be motivated, contributing to increased job productivity and job safety. First, management needs to provide a supportive culture with an emphasis on teamwork. This involves creating more team based activities and providing the team with decision-making authority. Union officials need to agree to have a role with management in supporting and facilitating this teamworking development. Secondly, through appropriate training GM management should provide De Santis and other employees with the appropriate skills and discretion to handle changes in work and work-related problems. When De Santis works in team she can align her own targets the objective of the team. By aligning with the goals of her fellow team members it will motivate her to improve her performance and achieve new targets. When the overall team’s goal is achieved, her personal goal is achieved too; she will feel proud of h...